Supreme Court Decision - Plessey v. Ferguson (1896)

Below follows the decision in a "landmark" case. A statute
in Louisiana forbid white and blacks from travelling in the same railway car. Homer
Plessy, a black, was arrested and convicted for violating the law. He sought help from the
United States Supreme Court, but it upheld his conviction. As you read the decision, it
may seem shocking, but also remember a lot of people, lawyers, legislators, etc. knew that
was the way it was -- but times change!
(italics below added for emphasis).

Mr. Justice BROWN delivered the opinion of the Court....

The object of the [Fourteenth] amendment was undoubtedly to
enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things
it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based on color, or to enforce
social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two
races upon terms unsatisfactory to either. Laws permitting, and even requiring,
that separation in places where they are liable to be brought into contact do not
necessarily imply the inferiority of either race to the other, and have been generally, if
not universally, recognized as within the competency of the state legislatures in the
exercise of their police power. The most common instance of this is connected with the
establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to
be a valid exercise of the legislative power even by courts of States where the political
rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced.

The distinction between laws interfering with the political equality of the negro and
those requiring the separation of the two races in schools, theaters, and railway
carriages has been frequently drawn by this Court. [The opinion then cites Strauder v.
West Virginia as an example of the "political equality" to which blacks were
entitled.]

It is claimed by the plaintiff in error that, in any mixed
community, the reputation of belonging to the dominant race, in this instance the white
race, is property, in the same sense that a right of action, or of inheritance, is
property. Conceding this to be so, for the purposes of this case, we are unable to see how
this statute deprives him of, or in any way affects his right to, such property. If he
be a white man and assigned to a colored coach, he may have his action for damages against
the company for being deprived of his so called property. Upon the other hand, if he be a
colored man and be so assigned, he has been deprived of no property, since he is not
lawfully entitled to the reputation of being a white man....

So far, then, as a conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment is
concerned, the case reduces itself to the question whether the statute of Louisiana is a
reasonable regulation, and with respect to this there must necessarily be a large
discretion on the part of the legislature. In determining the question of
reasonableness it is at liberty to act with reference to the established usages, customs
and traditions of the people, and with a view to the promotion of their comfort, and the
preservation of the public peace and good order. Gauged by this standard we cannot say
that a law which authorizes or even requires the separation of the two races in public
convevances is unreasonable, or more obnoxious to the Fourteenth Amendment than the
acts of Congress requiring separate schools for colored children in the District of
Columbia, the constitutionality of which does not seem to have been questioned, or the
corresponding acts of state legislatures.

We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's
argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps
the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of
anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that
construction upon it. The argument necessarily assumes that if, as has been more than once
the case, and is not unlikely to be so again, the colored race should become the dominant
power in the state legislature, and should enact a law in precisely similar terms, it
would thereby relegate the white race to an inferior position. We imagine that the white
race, at least, would not acquiesce in this assumption. The argument also assumes that
social prejudices may be overcome by legislation.... Legislation is powerless to
eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and
the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties of the present
situation.If the civil and political rights of both races be equal, one cannot
be inferior to the other civilly or politically. If one race be inferior to the other
socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane....